The basic job of a tax authority is to collect tax. In many countries, where multinational corporations are concerned, they are failing at that job. Salman Shaheen / International Tax Review finds out why.

Recent tax avoidance scandals heard by the court of public opinion have placed both corporations and governments in the dock. Corporations for finding inventive ways to pay little or no tax, and governments for failing to devise laws to stop them doing it. Certainly both must accept a good deal of responsibility for the size of the tax gap. But responsibility must also be borne by the bodies responsible for collecting the tax itself: the tax authorities.